“I’m very disappointed,” said McClaren. “That was definitely a poor performance and ‘going down’ material. The only positive is that we have 10 games to go.

“We have got to find the fighters in the team and the performance today did not epitomise that. We cannot play like that and hope to stay up.

“But we are fortunate that we’ve got 10 games and that’s enough. It’s a four-team league now and we play everyone around us.

“There was a certain edginess and you could see that in our play. We lost our shape. Normally we are a good attacking team, but today we were poor on the ball. You can only say that the pressure got to them.

“I can’t see any positives but we have to stick together as a staff and as a team, and fight.”

Speaking about the hostile atmosphere at St James Park, McClaren said: “As a coach you get through this. There are ups and downs. It’s not nice, but I can fully understand it after that.”